You Only Love My Mind
by Minttown1
Summary: Nick hosts a conversation-filled barbecue.


TITLE: You Only Love My Mind

AUTHOR: Amber/Minttown1

RATING: PG-13

CATEGORY: VHA

SPOILERS: The Finger, Burden of Proof, Bully For You (all minor, in my opinion)

SUMMARY: Nick hosts a conversation-filled barbecue.

ARCHIVAL: I'm so sick of filling in this line, no one reads it or cares. But the answer is yes.

DISCLAIMER: Not mine. Theirs. No money.

~*~*~*~*~

Warrick at down his hamburger and stared at the woman across from him. Sara was quietly picking the meat out of her pasta salad and sipping iced tea, wondering why she was there. Nick was her friend, but that was really no excuse to torture herself at a barbecue full of Nick's work friends and other men who she could only assume he had met through his gym. She was sitting with Warrick to avoid being hit on, something that she had enjoyed at least as a game before. Now it merely annoyed her.   


"Hello," said a nameless annoyance with a beer in his hand who had suddenly appeared beside her at the picnic table. He was a person too, she supposed, but he was a person who was bothering her during a meat-filled, stiflingly hot barbecue.   


"Hi." She said, looking up from the corkscrew pasta and pink meat cubes long enough to see the man's face.   


"So, you work with Nick?" the stranger asked. She stared at him. She wondered when she lost all her interest in dating, then realized that she had not exactly lost all her interest. The man continued, undaunted by her silence. "Name's Bill, by the way."   


Was she expected to answer him now? "Yeah."   


He glanced at Warrick, then back at Sara. "Yeah?"   


"I work with Nick."   


"Oh." Bill watched her, trying to read her. She hated to eat when someone was looking at her, so she pushed her meticulously cleaned plate of pasta salad away from her. "Have a name?" Bill asked.   


"Yes."   


"Okay." He glanced at Warrick again, then turned a smile on Sara. "Care to tell me what it is?"   


No. "Sara."   


"With an h or no h?"   


"No h."   


"Ah." He said it as if he had just had some deep insight into her personality. He was staring at her, not at her face, but at her body. She crossed her arms on the table in front of her chest and leaned forward, wondering what had happened to simple human consideration. "You want a drink?"   


More than usual. "No, I'm fine." Except she obviously was not, because some jerk was staring at her tank top, and she doubted he was interested in fashion, especially considering she was not herself.   


"Fine? You seem sort of tense, high strung. You can join in the festivities, you know." Was this guy for real? The thought crossed Sara and Warrick's minds at the same time.   


"I'm not much of a drinker. I don't really handle alcohol well," she told him, wondering why she was explaining herself to this stranger.   


"That's not a problem." He beamed, proud of his supposed joke, while she stared at him horrified.   


"Could you please leave me alone?"   


"What?" the man asked. The glance he shot Warrick this time was an angry one, a response to his chuckle.   


"I'm not interested. I don't date. I don't want a drink. I don't want someone to make crude attempts at crude jokes. I just wanted to eat my damned pasta salad and sit here with my friend. Being female and being at a party does not mean that I have a hidden desire to jump every cromagnon male in the county."   


The three people at the table sat in complete silence for a moment, then Warrick burst into loud laughter. Sara jumped at the sound, them her anger was immediately replaced by a small satisfied smile. Bill looked from one to the other several times, then got up and walked away.   


"He's a jerk," Sara informed Warrick in case his own intuition had not been as sharp as her own.   


"He's no Grissom."   


"He's obviously not," she agreed, "but what the hell was the point of that statement?"   


"I wonder."   


"So do I." She sighed. "You have to lay off the Grissom comments."   


"Especially considering he's watching us."   


"He is?" She turned and looked behind her and caught Grissom's eye, then turned back to Warrick with a smile on her face.   


"What a reaction."   


"Warrick."   


"I'm just saying."   


"Stop it."   


"Whatever happened with Hank?"   


"Warrick, lay off..." She stopped when she realized what he had asked. "Hank?"   


"Yes, Hank."   


"He..."   


"Was no Grissom?"   


"Was turned off by the kidnapping during our date."   


"I see. And he never called you after that?"   


"He called me."   


"And?"   


Grissom had sent her a plant by then. "I wasn't interested anymore. Maybe I'm just a temperamental female."   


"You are, but I don't really think that's it," Warrick told her. "Hey, Grissom." He waved in greeting as Grissom slid in beside Sara on the bench.   


"Hello." Grissom wrapped his hands around his styrofoam coffee cup and stared at the people milling around the yard.   


Warrick followed his gaze. "The good part is that we get to leave for work in a little less than an hour."   


"That blessing did not escape my notice. How long have you two been here?"   


"Too long," Sara answered, seeming to be fascinated by a red plastic spoon she found on the table.   


"I've been protecting Sara all evening," Warrick told Grissom.   


She tried to bend the spoon and it broke, so she got another one out of the box. "No, you've been laughing at me all evening."   


"Protecting? From what?" Grissom looked almost angry, and the fierce protectiveness did not escape Warrick's notice.   


"Men."   


"Pigs," Sara corrected him. She looked up from the spoon to Grissom and Warrick's faces. "Okay, not pigs. Pigs have too much history now."   


"What were they doing?" Grissom asked.   


"Talking to me," Sara answered as she fished her pocket knife out of her jeans pocket.   


"Hitting on her," Warrick added, watching Sara whittle a hole in the bottom of a disposable plastic cup and put the spoon through it. She smoothed a paper napkin out and covered it.   


"It's art," she informed them in hopes of changing the subject.   


"You're not an artist," Grissom said.   


"I might be. I could be," she insisted. "You wouldn't know if I were."   


"Why were men hitting on you?"   


"God, Grissom, I don't know." She disassembled the supposed sculpture. "I know it's hard for you to imagine someone hitting on me, seeing as how you only love my mind."   


"What?" Warrick and Grissom spoke at the same time, and Sara would have found it amusing had she not been trying to come up with a way to explain away the embarrassingly personal remark.   


"It's a line from a movie, a joke," she lied. It might have been for all she knew; she certainly had no explanation of its source.   


"Interesting quote." Grissom was staring at her intently now, but she did not know because she was pretending to pay the same amount of attention to twirling the spoon between her fingers.   


"In high school, I tried out for majorettes. You know, 'twirlers'?" She waited for their nods then continued, though she did not know why. "It was a bet. Anyway, I was accepted. I got in. So I decided to stay long enough to get my windbreaker with my name embroidered over the pocket. It was a big deal to me, even if I didn't want it to be. It was the closest thing I was going to get to a letter jacket. So I waited and suffered through three weeks of practice and drills until the jackets came in, and when I got mine my name was spelled wrong."   


One look at Grissom's face told her that he was barely resisting the urge to ask what the point of the story was. It was Warrick who responded first, though. "That's crap."   


"I know." She was surprised at herself for talking so candidly with them. "It wasn't the worst experience I had in high school, but it was sort of disappointing. I quit the next afternoon. I didn't want to do it anyway."   


They waited for her to continue, then Warrick asked, "Why not?"   


"Because I didn't really like the other girls on the squad," she admitted. "Also, the practice schedule conflicted with one of the clubs I was in."   


"What club?" Warrick asked, realizing he was more curious about Sara Sidle than he had thought.   


"Junior Science League."   


Warrick looked amused. "Junior Science League?"   


"What's wrong with the Junior Science League?" she wanted to know.   


"Nothing, except the name."   


"Well, I didn't name it."   


"I know you didn't." Warrick looked from Sara to Grissom, who seemed to have silently excused himself from the conversation. He was watching someone over Warrick's shoulder, looking vaguely annoyed. "Who are you looking at, Grissom?"   


"No one," Grissom answered, immediately redirecting his stare into his coffee cup. His answer only encouraged Warrick and Sara to follow his gaze. Their eyes immediately locked on Hank, who took their attention as a silent invitation to join them.   


"Why were you staring at him?" Sara asked Grissom as Hank made his way over to them, but he did not have time to answer.   


Hank was standing at the table now. "Hello." Sara watched the almost surreal scene before her, feeling sick as Hank took the seat next to Warrick directly and across from Grissom. Was Grissom sitting closer to her now? She had to be imagining that part. "It's been a while, Sara. How are you?"   


Conflicted. "I'm fine."   


"Good, good." He nodded. "That was, well, an interesting date a few months ago. To say the least."   


"Yeah." She smiled. She smiled too much around him. She only smiled that like when she was uncomfortable.   


Warrick was trying to save her. It was the first time that day, regardless of what he had told Grissom. "So, Hank, how's work been on your end of things?"   


"Same as always. Good and bad."   


"As long as you're passionate," Grissom remarked, causing Sara to turn to look at him. He was sitting closer to her now. It had not been her imagination. "Don't do something that you don't love, that you don't consider a calling."   


"So crime scene investigation is a calling?" Hank asked skeptically.   


"For some," Grissom replied. "It's a calling, a challenge, a puzzle, a satisfaction, a service."   


"What I do is a service, too," Hank said.   


"Of course," Grissom assured him.   


This conversation was not helping to lessen the surreal feeling Sara had gradually succumbed to since sitting at the table hours before. Was she insane, or was Grissom actually competing with Hank? "We have to go," she said quietly. Grissom actually looked at her for the first time since Hank had joined them. "It's getting late. We have to leave."   


"Yeah." Grissom looked back across the table at Hank. "It was nice talking to you."   


"Yeah, you too," Hank replied. "I liked seeing you again, Sara." She was not sure it was true. Even if it were, she found that she could not bring herself to care.   


Grissom helped Sara unnecessarily over the bench. Her hand lingered in his for too long after she should have let go, her eyes lingered in his for too long after she should have looked away. She felt herself forget to breathe. He looked at her face, he loved her mind.   


Warrick had been right.   


No one else was Grissom.


End file.
